Indiscriminate pursuit of perfection infallibly leads to mediocrity.

Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single object.

Emulation embalms the dead; envy, the vampire, blasts the living.

Expression alone can invest beauty with supreme and lasting command over the eye.

All actions and attitudes of children are graceful because they are the luxuriant and immediate offspring of the moment - divested of affectation and free from all pretense.

Art, like love, excludes all competition and absorbs the man.

Art among a religious race produces reliques [sic]; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.

The price of excellence is labor, and time that of immortality.

Ancient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece and the servant of Rome.

Life is rapid, art is slow, occasion coy, practice fallacious, and judgment partial.

Heaven and earth, advantages and obstacles, conspire to educate genius.

Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.

If you believe in “luck”, always let it be good luck. Always choose to be "lucky", rather than "luckless".Be "happy", rather than "hapless".

I'm surrounded by friends and family who are not that impressed by celebrity. They don't have any problem telling me I'm acting like an idiot or I'm not that funny.

Our friendship is made up of these brief frenzied exchanges, but the quality of our conversation, for all its feverish outpouring, is genuine.

Perfectionism is boring and doesn't exist-to strive for it makes you uninteresting.

I just believe that whatever you put into your system you're going to see on your face and your body.

What are you doing for others?

Fortunes gravitate to men whose minds have been prepared to attract them just as surely as water gravitates to the ocean.

I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.

A man's real and deep feelings are surely those which he acts upon when challenged, not those which, mellow-eyed and soft-voiced, he spouts in easy times.